


Red Shoes

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/F, Trans, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-02
Updated: 2012-03-02
Packaged: 2017-11-01 00:43:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam loves to dance in her red shoes.</p><p>additional warnings for brief moments of cissexism and a mostly non explicit sex scene in the beginning. Neither of these two instances form the core of the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Shoes

**Author's Note:**

> written for Lena, who wanted trans!Sam/Jessica fic.

Before she sleeps, Sam tucks her legs against her chest but they always straighten till she’s hanging off the bed until she wakes up, Charlie horses curling and stringing themselves tight in her calves because not even Stanford is safe, muscles coiling to leap out of bed, cramped hands prepared to grip the shotgun stowed under their bed.

She shifts, tries to shake the cramps away. 

She’s checked under the bed and in the closet. She knows. She presses her palms over her eyes, squeezes them shut until they ache, splashing white bleary lights across her lids. 

Jessica rolls over, hooks her leg over Sam’s waist, pressing herself so tight against her until Sam can feel her warmth bleed through their t-shirts, her hand sliding against the sweat slicking her skin, dipping underneath the collar of her simple white tee, fingers circling and teasing her nipples.

“Hi,” she whispers sleepily in Sam’s ear.

“Can’t sleep,” Sam says, looking over towards the other end of the wall where a computer blips green and yellow lights in the darkness. This isn’t a motel room—it’s Jess’s place, and yeah maybe there are salt lines because that’s just a basic precaution, but there is nothing in the shadows, nothing lurking under the bed, nothing but her and Jess together in bed, trying to sleep.

This is home now. 

She presses a smile against her neck, and Sam shivers at the promise of teeth, wondering if she’d ever press anything more sharply bladed than a smile against her skin even as her hand creeps down, slipping underneath her plaid pajama bottoms, hovering over where Sam is already getting hard as she whispers, “Do you wanna?”

Sam closes her eyes, licks the salt from her lips. “Only if you call me Samantha,” she whispers back.

Jessica grips her hair at the nape of her neck, and says, “Samantha,” as she strokes down, presses a kiss against the fold of her earlobe, “Samantha,” as she strokes down again, thumb pressing against her glans, in just the way Sam likes it. “Samantha—“ her hips rolling against Sam’s buttocks as she slides a knee between Sam’s legs. 

And Sam feels her other hand slide across her clavicle, fingers caressing her throat, but never really squeezing and after a while, she finally comes over Jessica’s hand, quiet, her voice barely catching, while Jessica whispers, “Do you feel better? Was it good for you?” 

And Sam says that it was and asks if Jessica wants some but she says she’s had what she wants, she’s satisfied, and Sam nods her head and they drift off to sleep until the alarm clock rings and they push snooze until they’re both almost late for their classes, dashing out the door, chowing down on protein bars.

 Sometimes, walking across campus, Sam’ll see a boy with short cropped hair, sporting a leather jacket. She thinks, Dean—and remembers that Dean is hunting elsewhere, out of state, eating stale pizza from the box without even bothering to brush his teeth before bed.

Gross.

“Hey,” Jess says.

She stands on tip toe, pushes Sam’s bangs back from her forehead with her fingers, and it feels good, the pressure against her scalp. 

Dean used to do that when she was younger—  _Gotta cut your hair, Sammy, you big girl._

She flinches away, and Jess says, “Did I—“

And Sam shakes her head. “I’m just. I’m gonna be late.” 

She doesn’t go to class. She goes to the gym, to the room with mirrors for walls, where people practiced their ballet. Some wore leotards. Some simple sweats. Some were stretching out, or laughing with their friends. 

Sam watches them, her backpack digging into her shoulders. She remembers when Dean had caught her dancing—“This is debate club? I mean, I thought that that was sissy but this is just—“

The way he had caught himself, catching Sam’s face in the mirror. The way he had pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, Sammy,” his voice real soft, “Just don’t let Dad find out.” 

And he had leaned back against the wall, arms folded across his chest, watching Sam dance with the other kids on the sly, all loose in her sweat pants, not yet so tall as to tower above them all. 

The class ends, and Sam checks the schedule on the wall. There’s an hour break before the next one (yoga), so she drops her backpack to the floor with a thud, hauls out her law books, sets them carefully aside, until she finds her red ballet shoes wrapped tight in plastic snug at the bottom, wedged against the seams, just the way Dean had given them to her for Christmas, another one gone by where Dad hadn’t shown up and there were no Christmas trees, but Dean had pushed his way through the door, all swagger, tossing the bag into her lap, “Here you go, Sammy.”

Sam never asked him why, just held them up. She knew they weren’t very good quality, that they weren’t professional. But they were pointe shoes, the box hard and digging in the cup of her palm.

She never asked where Dean got them. She didn’t want to know.

“Thanks,” she had said, and then they had heard the thump of Dad’s boots on the porch, and Dean had launched himself to the door, opening it first so that his broad shoulders blocked the view as Sam thrust the shoes into her satchel, burying them under dirty laundry streaked with sweat and grave dirt.

There wasn’t much time for dancing, hunting.

She presses the shoes against her chest, the toes hard and jutting against her chin. She kicks off her boots, peels off the long thin cotton socks, shoves her feet in the tight space of the shoes. 

Dean, lazy and sleepy flopped on his stomach on the bed, channel surfing until he stumbled on a kids’ production ballet that was being filmed live on a local channel. “You ever gonna wear those shoes, Sammy?”

And she had just flushed, feeling sick and warm, mumbling something about one day, and Dean rolling over on his side, muttering, as she had pressed her face against the pillow. 

In the shoes, her feet are longer, and it’s weird as she remembers half-forgotten muscle patterns, holding her arms just so as she walks carefully along the length of the mirror, watching how the tattered cuffs of her blue jeans brush the cheap satin of her red shoes.

She stops when she hears the tramp of students coming back in.

Back at home, they have frozen dinners. Jessica runs her fingers through Sam’s hair. “Where did you go?” she says, and Sam flushes because she remembers now that the one class she had ditched was one of the classes they were taking together. 

“Dancing,” Sam says.

“I didn’t know you danced,” Jessica says, fingers stilling a moment before resuming their slow circle across Sam’s scalp.

Sam swallows down the lump in her throat, fingers flexing against her knees.  “Do you want to see?” she says.

Jessica’s hands slip out of Sam’s hair, strands getting caught on her rough nails, pulling a little bit. “Yeah, I would.”

So she takes the shoes from where they had landed at the top of her books. Puts them on again, this time more gently. Makes sure the ribbons aren’t twisted up when she laces them up.

Flexes her foot at the ankle, then lifts her legs a half inch off the ground, pointing them sharply, admiring the curve of her arches.

Looks to Jessica. “Pretty,” she says, and her hair is so gold in the dimmed lights. “Show me more?”

And Sam smiles, glances down at the hard edge of her toes peeking from the white-stringed curtain hem of her jeans. Folds her legs up, pushes herself into a standing position without using her hands, goes through a basic routine. Her toes aren’t quite at the right degree, her elbows too straight—but she doesn’t care.

If Jessica notices it’s rough and clumsy, she doesn’t say anything.

So Sam takes off her big plaid shirt, folds it up into a ball, tosses it into Jessica’s face. 

They both laugh.

Sam remembers more from those half-stolen early lessons. Soon her skin runs hot and high like it always does because she’s such a great big moose—like her brother always said—so she peels her white shirt from her skin, lets it drop on the floor.

Jessica leans forward, hand fumbling for the stereo, and she plays the music cd that Sam always listens to when she needs to study. Cellos and violins with the soft rippling undercurrent of piano.

Her feet find the rhythm, and she feels the pressure against her toes as her muscles shake to lift her into pointe position. 

And the jeans are too coarse against her skin, so she thumbs back the button, pulls down the zipper, hooks her fingers under the waistband and the elastic of her boxer briefs, hops clumsily out of them both, nudges them out of the way with the toe of her red shoes, starts again, calves shivering under her weight, wings of her shoulders pressed tight together as she pulls her arms back, fingers feathering through the air as she follows the pull of the music, feet stumbling over the strings of violin melodies as she dances naked while Jessica leans forward, her chin propped up on her two fists, knees close together as she sits on the edge of the couch, her body swaying in time. 

Sam stops when her legs can no longer keep her on pointe, when her muscles tremble beneath her skin, aching little jabs of exhaustion prickling around her joints. Jessica helps her unlace her shoes, and there’s blood on the nubs of her toes, worn too hard and long, but Sam’s seen blood before, it doesn’t faze her, and all Jessica does is fetch a bowl of warm water to wash Sam’s feet. 

They slip into comfortable pajamas—she with her blue smurf shirt, and Sam just in a white tee, and then Sam wakes up again, but not from the pain and ache of her legs wanting to run, but from the sound of someone else, someone moving in the room below.

So she finds the bat because she doesn’t know for sure it’s a monster—it’s probably just some creepy asshole.

She goes downstairs, gets the air knocked flat out of her as her big brother says, “Easy there, sis.” 

And they’re wrestling on the floor, just like old times, and just like old times he wants her to go on a hunt because Dad can’t be bothered to keep in touch. 

Sam puts the red shoes beside her sickle as she packs. “It won’t be long,” she says. “I’ll come back.” And, her stomach flips as she sees Jessica watching her from across the broad expanse of the bed. “I’ll be back,” she says again.

Jessica bites her lip, licks the mark away. “Okay. Call me, yeah?”

And Sam nods that yes, she will, of course she’ll call.

She folds herself into the cramped passenger seat just as Dean twists the volume all the way up on Styx, cocky grin on his mouth as the tires squeal around the corner. Sam peeks into the tapes, groaning inside because Dean’s playing the same old tunes, dragging Sam along, dancing the same old dance:  _saving people hunting things_. 


End file.
